At this point there are too many scammers,people with very poor morals. Point is it will take a much more HONEST developer and one that is willing to take some of the risk as well not get greedy and give back to the game. Naturally the game still has to be good,but if the business side is honest and fair i am sure people will adore it.
Right now the entire gaming industry is full lies and deceit and it is not right.
The money to be made has turned very big and that always draws in the predators to feast.
Most of you seem to think it is business practices that need to change for mmos to improve personally I think its technology. Real ai, improved vr, photo realistic graphics, realistic physics, etc. technology will change mmos eventually. Trends in the corporate gaming industry will not change mmos drastically enough ever to bring about a new renaissance.
Most of you seem to think it is business practices that need to change for mmos to improve personally I think its technology. Real ai, improved vr, photo realistic graphics, realistic physics, etc. technology will change mmos eventually. Trends in the corporate gaming industry will not change mmos drastically enough ever to bring about a new renaissance.
The technology exists to create a great MMO. What's lacking is innovation on the part of any major development company. They are redoing the same game model over and over and over with only minor tweaks here and there.
All the MMOs I'm waiting on right now are indy. Not a single one that I have any interest in is being developed by a company like Blizzard, EA, Bethesda or any of these other companies that have the ability to get a self-funded triple A title off the ground. Now there are some great MMOs in the works but player's aren't understanding what it takes to get an MMO off the ground.
They see how much money Star Citizen has brought in and are wondering why they haven't delivered everything that was promised yesterday. They don't understand that while that's big money for an indie title it's small money for an MMO, and is a process that will take years.
It could happen as long as enough people support the independent projects that take risks trying to innovate. The more people that foolishly shit all over crowdfunding, the less likely it is to happen.
A problem for the small devs is that people want bleeding edge graphics. Anything less is crap graphics and automatic fail. I wish that gameplay was valued more than graphics but the why can't we have both people can't deal.
Kyleran: "Now there's the real trick, learning to accept and enjoy a game for what
it offers rather than pass on what might be a great playing experience
because it lacks a few features you prefer."
John Henry Newman: "A man would do nothing if he waited until he could do it so well that no one could find fault."
FreddyNoNose: "A good game needs no defense; a bad game has no defense." "Easily digested content is just as easily forgotten."
LacedOpium: "So the question that begs to be asked is, if you are not interested in
the game mechanics that define the MMORPG genre, then why are you
playing an MMORPG?"
I think the next renaissance will come as adaptive AI is more prevailant in MMOs. At this point most players are privey to what the standard models are. Gameplay that allows an evolving story via AI will be huge and that in multiple titles/genres will spark interest outside typical MMO players IMO.
I don't think we will, todays gamers could never handle the mmorpg's in 99 - 05. In fact, todays gamers can't even really handle an mmorpg at all. Nobody appreciates putting time and effort into a game. It's well explained here:
In other words, those games provided years of straight gameplay. Games released now and in the long foreseen future will only provide a few weeks (at best) and anything more is unacceptable.
Well , I agree with you in the first place! However .. there is this small chance that 1 game could come and just blow everyone's mind ( ala WoW ) and people could be interested in it for the long run.
It could happen. Heck , it happened to me with Legion . I can't remember when was the last MMO which actually hold my interest for more the ONE month and yet, here I am, 1 month and 4 days with every day login in WoW with min of 4-5 hours of game-time daily ( a lot I know ) .
It's not the "simple" grind which is the problem, it's the GAMEPLAY and if that grind is fun or not.
But, it will take awhile until we see another "history changer MMO" !
Reporter: What's behind Blizzard success, and how do you make your gamers happy? Blizzard Boss: Making gamers happy is not my concern, making money.. yes!
I think a resurgence is possible, but highly unlikely in a manner that will fit the current definition of an MMO.
While I have as much nostalgia as anyone for the MMOs of yore, many people conveniently forget the almost universal constant of that era: time = win. I truly do appreciate the feeling of accomplishment of working hard toward a goal and being rewarded for it, but like most people who enjoyed that era I now have a job, a life outside of gaming, and real obligations that won't allow me to commit to that type of game no matter how much I might enjoy it. Furthermore, modern gamers are largely unwilling to play games that require that kind of time investment.
In other words, the models of the past won't ever re-surge as viable (IMO) and I have yet to see a successful MMORPG model that isn't time=win or P2W. If developers can find a formula that offers more immediate enjoyment (eliminate level grinding) and also an elder game that isn't reliant primarily on time investment then there is a chance.
If I were to guess, then the answer would be something more resembling an ARPG/MMO hybrid. Who knows, maybe Blizzcon this year will announce Diable IV: The MMO Hybrid.
Not all MMOs have been time = win. Guildwars to mention one was not like that, a great player could play through all the campaigns in a week. Of course, close to no one is that good and focused and it took most of us months.
I think though that the problem isn't the time invested in itself that is the problem. The problem is how fast, easy and rewarding the games are early only to become slower and slower. Once you hit the endgame you are more or less repeating the same dungeons and raids over and over hoping for a few rare drops. The pacing of MMOs have become worse and worse since TBC came out.
If you portion out the content better the game last longer and players will spend more time in it.
Of course for MMOs to become as large as when it peaked you need new mechanics and new ideas as well but I think the problem is that the games started to focus too much on the early game assuming people who enjoy the first 20 levels will stay a long time, it actually got the opposite effect and is the reason so many players jump game every 2 weeks or so.
Most MMOs today put 75% of the content in the open world and most of that content is starting zones and low level zones. Then you get 20% dungeons, half of them endgame dungeons and 5% raids. A normal player will max out his or her character in 2-3 weeks leaving them with 15% of the content unless they make an alt. And the zones are generally smaller in new games forcing you to repeat the same content with new characters. Yeah, those numbers are a guess but I think they are pretty close to most MMOs today.
A game like Everquest constantly fed you about the same amount of content all the time except the first few levels. Vanilla Wow was a little bit worse but still had a good pacing.
My two cents... There will never and can never be "one MMO to rule them all." Opinions differ too much about what could be "the best."
Technically there never was a renaissance of MMORPG's the assumed timeframe of such there were only a handful of massively multiplayer games and honestly the interests for them was never really that high either. Very few have ever sustained a population over 20k even today, Everquest in its early days barely scratched that.
Nevertheless back to topic. Game pacing and design are really tough to decide on, yet alone the time to develop and implement. I suppose this would depend on the type of game and ruleset as well. Sandboxes for great example pacing would be pointless for story narrative and the like, but extremely important on player resources and win/success conditions. "Themeparks" as they are called for some reason, are another story, content gating would have to be carefully measured on just right pacing, can't just let someone/a team win or succeed too fast, but at the same time if it's too slow the players will lose interest.
The good news is there has now been about 20 years of MMORPG's to gauge a demographic and set pacing. This wasn't a luxury during the "golden age" but a mere strike of luck and nothing else to compare at the time. Nostalgia is a bitch and usually more of a let down in reality than we would like to think.
I personally believe by just removing dungeon finders, auction houses, and the fact everyone is the chosen one would be a move in a very positive direction to bring back the social aspect. The bottom line is the time we spend in these games needs to have value and it doesn't so we game hop..and hop..and hop. No Level syncing no fast travels add housing and for the love of god make crafting useful for Christ sakes.
I personally believe by just removing dungeon finders, auction houses, and the fact everyone is the chosen one would be a move in a very positive direction to bring back the social aspect. The bottom line is the time we spend in these games needs to have value and it doesn't so we game hop..and hop..and hop. No Level syncing no fast travels add housing and for the love of god make crafting useful for Christ sakes.
I think you kind of hit at the heart of the problem in the bolded statement if greater social involvement is what you want.
"Everyone being the chosen one" translates to a scripted storyline that everyone does as the heart of the game's narrative.
If instead the heart of the narrative is unscripted player actions driving the course of the world (sandbox) then people need to work together to make a real impact on it.
I think the problem you get then is that in most sandboxes with a player driven narrative people tend to carve out their own little sections of territory and declare a "Not Blue, Shoot It" policy.
In those situations that means that unless you belong to their alliance, you aren't really socializing with them by any means except swords/guns.
So the ultimate solution IMO is that there needs to be a player driven sandbox that does not set up game systems in such a way as to encourage everyone to kill each other but actually has player driven cities where random foot-traffic is allowed or even encouraged.
Here on some of my thought's on how to pull that objective off:
People that think MMORPG's are over and the genre is dead are either not paying attention or just lamenting the loss of the MMORPG's they first played. Unfortunately in the west we are currently mired in this silly crowdfunding phase where washed up developers are internet panhandling for fanboy donations while producing little more than tech demos or pure garbage games that don't even meet 1999 standards.
Meanwhile over in the east companies like Net Ease and Tencent, both of whom have the money to buy and sell Blizzard many times over, are busy developing several MMORPG's. Sadly though, eastern games have a miserable track record in the west mostly because of terrible decision making on the part of third party publishers. Hopefully someone was paying attention and they won't keep making that same mistake.
MMORPG's seem to be getting less focused on the traditional questing and gear grinding and more focused on the social aspects. That is after all what made MMORPG's different in the beginning was the ability to interact with lots of people. They seem to be trying to make more of a virtual world than just a game. Maybe VR will add something to that at some point, but right now it still seems like more of a gimmick than a real new interface. Guilds used to be little more than a chat room, but more games are making them an entity to encourage a group goal. Some games have a lot of politics or control of territory, and some are very economically driven. None of this is completely new, but it's grown in depth and scope compared to the games from 15 years ago. Now they even stuff like getting married in games, which personally I could do without, but I was never an RP player so maybe that sort of stuff is lost on me.
I don't think there is going to be any sudden massive change that we will be able to point to and say oh yeah year xyz was the year that MMORPG's changed forever. I think it's going to be more of a gradual evolution into something that is more sustainable than your typical carrot on a stick format that developers have been trying to copy and failing pretty badly at for a decade now.
For the same reason 3D didn't take off, its the glasses......
I actually kind of enjoy the kinesthetic activity of snapping the phone into the headset, pulling the strap over my head, taking a moment to let my eyes adjust to my new vision.
Yes, having them blow up in your face must be a thrilling experience too.
For the same reason 3D didn't take off, its the glasses......
I actually kind of enjoy the kinesthetic activity of snapping the phone into the headset, pulling the strap over my head, taking a moment to let my eyes adjust to my new vision.
Yes, having them blow up in your face must be a thrilling experience too.
They have early versions of electronic eyes and ears now. I'll bet VR will work better for cyborgs.
For the same reason 3D didn't take off, its the glasses......
I actually kind of enjoy the kinesthetic activity of snapping the phone into the headset, pulling the strap over my head, taking a moment to let my eyes adjust to my new vision.
Yes, having them blow up in your face must be a thrilling experience too.
Thankfully, I'm not using a model that's been prone to explode. Those were recalled, and they no longer work with GearVR. If it did happen, I wouldn't be likely to do it again.
"The simple is the seal of the true and beauty is the splendor of truth" -Subrahmanyan Chandrasekhar Authored 139 missions in VendettaOnline and 6 tracks in Distance
I'm guessing that there won't be a new resurgence of MMORPGs. MMORPGs grew directly from the MUDs, CRPGs and Face-to-face RP games. The bulk of the systems used in all MMORPGs derive from the original -- D&D. That was the innovation in gaming -- one (or more) players providing imaginative content for others, with rules to determine outcomes of conflicts. Prior to D&D, games involved recreating a set of physical circumstances, mostly based on military (and occasionally scientific) principles, to allow competing players to explore a military/historical situation.
But, the genre hasn't grown. The base games didn't include mechanisms for non-combative resolutions, so newer generations of games haven't ventured out to encapsulate other form of conflict. The GM is the universal catch-all. If there is a court trial, or an election or a political debate, the game left these situations to the GM. If there is a romantic situation, again, the GM has to make the determination if the avatar partners are attracted to one another. The original pen-and-paper games skipped out on a simulation system to handle these types of situations, relying on the GM.
Problem is, a GM doesn't scale to a Massive Multiplayer situation. Even the best face-to-face GMs can only deal with so many players at once. Developers are seemingly afraid to innovate by simulating systems outside of direct physical conflict, because "D&D didn't do it", leaving games that feel like clones of each other. This gives me a feeling of 'incompleteness' in every current MMORPG, an incompleteness based not on technical limitations, but on lack of ambition.
If there is a new gaming craze of the same magnitude as the 2000-2016 MMORPG craze, it will involve something rather revolutionary. MOBAs have incorporated features from many genres of games (RPG, FPS, and RTS mostly), but they have pretty much exhausted the possible combinations of these basic games. I feel that someone will need to innovate beyond the current generation of gaming experiences, both pen-and-paper and computerized. Maybe in the 2200s.
Logic, my dear, merely enables one to be wrong with great authority.
@donger56 - What new games are offering social/sandbox features like player controlled territory that aren't being crowdfunded?
Exactly.
The crowdfunding haters are very misguided if they believe any real innovation is on the horizon from AAA developers. It'll be the smaller companies that take big risks; that's where the new stuff will come from. Then the AAA developers will steal it and improve upon it when the risk factor is minimized due to it being a vetted product. But without the small indie companies (the often reviled crowdfunded projects), we're not getting anything new in the MMO scene.
I wasn't necessarily challenging the truth of his statement. I was actually curious because I've been watching closely for territorial control titles and all the ones I can think of are crowdfunded. If he knows of something I don't I would really love to hear about it.
A few simple words will bring about a resurgence....RICH...Honest developer with more passion for gaming than business.Guess where the money comes from for the few RICH businesses,yep from investors who care little for gaming,so it is a long shot that we see a rebound towards triple A quality.
Never forget 3 mile Island and never trust a government official or company spokesman.
The first happened shortly after the burst of the internet. The second will probably happen shortly after the introduction of some sort of new technology. My guess would be when a total (5 senses) VR system is developed, but it may be sooner if there is something else that could upgrade the internet. Maybe quantum networking...........
A few simple words will bring about a resurgence....RICH...Honest developer with more passion for gaming than business.Guess where the money comes from for the few RICH businesses,yep from investors who care little for gaming,so it is a long shot that we see a rebound towards triple A quality.
The triple constraint - RICH, HONEST and PASSION (for gaming) You can only pick two... We get:
Investor who is honest and has passion for gaming but has no money.
Investor who is rich and has passion for gaming but has no integrity.
Investor who is rich and honest but has no interest in gaming.
"A game is fun if it is learnable but not trivial" -- Togelius & Schmidhuber
Comments
"Be water my friend" - Bruce Lee
All the MMOs I'm waiting on right now are indy. Not a single one that I have any interest in is being developed by a company like Blizzard, EA, Bethesda or any of these other companies that have the ability to get a self-funded triple A title off the ground. Now there are some great MMOs in the works but player's aren't understanding what it takes to get an MMO off the ground.
They see how much money Star Citizen has brought in and are wondering why they haven't delivered everything that was promised yesterday. They don't understand that while that's big money for an indie title it's small money for an MMO, and is a process that will take years.
A problem for the small devs is that people want bleeding edge graphics. Anything less is crap graphics and automatic fail. I wish that gameplay was valued more than graphics but the why can't we have both people can't deal.
Epic Music: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vAigCvelkhQ&list=PLo9FRw1AkDuQLEz7Gvvaz3ideB2NpFtT1
https://archive.org/details/softwarelibrary_msdos?&sort=-downloads&page=1
Kyleran: "Now there's the real trick, learning to accept and enjoy a game for what it offers rather than pass on what might be a great playing experience because it lacks a few features you prefer."
John Henry Newman: "A man would do nothing if he waited until he could do it so well that no one could find fault."
FreddyNoNose: "A good game needs no defense; a bad game has no defense." "Easily digested content is just as easily forgotten."
LacedOpium: "So the question that begs to be asked is, if you are not interested in the game mechanics that define the MMORPG genre, then why are you playing an MMORPG?"
It could happen. Heck , it happened to me with Legion . I can't remember when was the last MMO which actually hold my interest for more the ONE month and yet, here I am, 1 month and 4 days with every day login in WoW with min of 4-5 hours of game-time daily ( a lot I know ) .
It's not the "simple" grind which is the problem, it's the GAMEPLAY and if that grind is fun or not.
But, it will take awhile until we see another "history changer MMO" !
Reporter: What's behind Blizzard success, and how do you make your gamers happy?
Blizzard Boss: Making gamers happy is not my concern, making money.. yes!
I think though that the problem isn't the time invested in itself that is the problem. The problem is how fast, easy and rewarding the games are early only to become slower and slower. Once you hit the endgame you are more or less repeating the same dungeons and raids over and over hoping for a few rare drops. The pacing of MMOs have become worse and worse since TBC came out.
If you portion out the content better the game last longer and players will spend more time in it.
Of course for MMOs to become as large as when it peaked you need new mechanics and new ideas as well but I think the problem is that the games started to focus too much on the early game assuming people who enjoy the first 20 levels will stay a long time, it actually got the opposite effect and is the reason so many players jump game every 2 weeks or so.
Most MMOs today put 75% of the content in the open world and most of that content is starting zones and low level zones. Then you get 20% dungeons, half of them endgame dungeons and 5% raids. A normal player will max out his or her character in 2-3 weeks leaving them with 15% of the content unless they make an alt. And the zones are generally smaller in new games forcing you to repeat the same content with new characters. Yeah, those numbers are a guess but I think they are pretty close to most MMOs today.
A game like Everquest constantly fed you about the same amount of content all the time except the first few levels. Vanilla Wow was a little bit worse but still had a good pacing.
Technically there never was a renaissance of MMORPG's the assumed timeframe of such there were only a handful of massively multiplayer games and honestly the interests for them was never really that high either. Very few have ever sustained a population over 20k even today, Everquest in its early days barely scratched that.
Nevertheless back to topic. Game pacing and design are really tough to decide on, yet alone the time to develop and implement. I suppose this would depend on the type of game and ruleset as well.
Sandboxes for great example pacing would be pointless for story narrative and the like, but extremely important on player resources and win/success conditions.
"Themeparks" as they are called for some reason, are another story, content gating would have to be carefully measured on just right pacing, can't just let someone/a team win or succeed too fast, but at the same time if it's too slow the players will lose interest.
The good news is there has now been about 20 years of MMORPG's to gauge a demographic and set pacing. This wasn't a luxury during the "golden age" but a mere strike of luck and nothing else to compare at the time. Nostalgia is a bitch and usually more of a let down in reality than we would like to think.
I think you kind of hit at the heart of the problem in the bolded statement if greater social involvement is what you want.
"Everyone being the chosen one" translates to a scripted storyline that everyone does as the heart of the game's narrative.
If instead the heart of the narrative is unscripted player actions driving the course of the world (sandbox) then people need to work together to make a real impact on it.
I think the problem you get then is that in most sandboxes with a player driven narrative people tend to carve out their own little sections of territory and declare a "Not Blue, Shoot It" policy.
In those situations that means that unless you belong to their alliance, you aren't really socializing with them by any means except swords/guns.
So the ultimate solution IMO is that there needs to be a player driven sandbox that does not set up game systems in such a way as to encourage everyone to kill each other but actually has player driven cities where random foot-traffic is allowed or even encouraged.
Here on some of my thought's on how to pull that objective off:
http://harbingerhideout.enjin.com/forum/m/39251331/viewthread/28325110-play-open-world-pvp-sandbox-for-crafting-pve
Meanwhile over in the east companies like Net Ease and Tencent, both of whom have the money to buy and sell Blizzard many times over, are busy developing several MMORPG's. Sadly though, eastern games have a miserable track record in the west mostly because of terrible decision making on the part of third party publishers. Hopefully someone was paying attention and they won't keep making that same mistake.
MMORPG's seem to be getting less focused on the traditional questing and gear grinding and more focused on the social aspects. That is after all what made MMORPG's different in the beginning was the ability to interact with lots of people. They seem to be trying to make more of a virtual world than just a game. Maybe VR will add something to that at some point, but right now it still seems like more of a gimmick than a real new interface. Guilds used to be little more than a chat room, but more games are making them an entity to encourage a group goal. Some games have a lot of politics or control of territory, and some are very economically driven. None of this is completely new, but it's grown in depth and scope compared to the games from 15 years ago. Now they even stuff like getting married in games, which personally I could do without, but I was never an RP player so maybe that sort of stuff is lost on me.
I don't think there is going to be any sudden massive change that we will be able to point to and say oh yeah year xyz was the year that MMORPG's changed forever. I think it's going to be more of a gradual evolution into something that is more sustainable than your typical carrot on a stick format that developers have been trying to copy and failing pretty badly at for a decade now.
"The simple is the seal of the true and beauty is the splendor of truth" -Subrahmanyan Chandrasekhar
Authored 139 missions in Vendetta Online and 6 tracks in Distance
But, the genre hasn't grown. The base games didn't include mechanisms for non-combative resolutions, so newer generations of games haven't ventured out to encapsulate other form of conflict. The GM is the universal catch-all. If there is a court trial, or an election or a political debate, the game left these situations to the GM. If there is a romantic situation, again, the GM has to make the determination if the avatar partners are attracted to one another. The original pen-and-paper games skipped out on a simulation system to handle these types of situations, relying on the GM.
Problem is, a GM doesn't scale to a Massive Multiplayer situation. Even the best face-to-face GMs can only deal with so many players at once. Developers are seemingly afraid to innovate by simulating systems outside of direct physical conflict, because "D&D didn't do it", leaving games that feel like clones of each other. This gives me a feeling of 'incompleteness' in every current MMORPG, an incompleteness based not on technical limitations, but on lack of ambition.
If there is a new gaming craze of the same magnitude as the 2000-2016 MMORPG craze, it will involve something rather revolutionary. MOBAs have incorporated features from many genres of games (RPG, FPS, and RTS mostly), but they have pretty much exhausted the possible combinations of these basic games. I feel that someone will need to innovate beyond the current generation of gaming experiences, both pen-and-paper and computerized. Maybe in the 2200s.
Logic, my dear, merely enables one to be wrong with great authority.
I wasn't necessarily challenging the truth of his statement. I was actually curious because I've been watching closely for territorial control titles and all the ones I can think of are crowdfunded. If he knows of something I don't I would really love to hear about it.
"Be water my friend" - Bruce Lee
Never forget 3 mile Island and never trust a government official or company spokesman.
You can only pick two...
We get:
"A game is fun if it is learnable but not trivial" -- Togelius & Schmidhuber